In the workplace and in the classroom, there is an ever-increasing appreciation of—and demand for—harnessing the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, envision new possibilities, and reveal latent knowledge. Even so, technological support for these real-time, face-to-face processes has fallen far behind the expanding need.
Outside of the classroom, the most successful such supportive technology is paper-based. This technology includes, for example, “Idea-Catchers®,” “Post-It® notes,” and other “stickies” of various sizes and shapes. Inside classrooms, where budgets for supplies are typically very tight, these paper-based approaches are infrequently used. In the realm of computer-supported collaboration, student response systems (SRS, sometimes called “clickers”) are growing in popularity. Clicker systems, however, support only the most rudimentary of whole-group processes (e.g., the classroom analog of voting). Employed appropriately, however, these “clickers” can be a powerful tool for stimulating important conversations, encouraging active conceptualization, and providing graphic illustration of what the class does—and doesn't—know and believe. But, obviously, a lot of important conceptual work cannot be represented as voting. And while Post-It® notes can form the medium for a much broader range of conceptual work, their physicality necessitates a lot of manual busy work (e.g., distributing, collecting, copying and duplicating, moving from place to place, etc.), as well as ongoing supply, archiving, and publication issues.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for providing light-weight, flexible support for brainstorming, deep dives, and collaborative decision making with automated distribution, collection, and aggregation support.